Hialeah`s Closing Helps Farms Grow

INDIANTOWN -- Roger Attfield tipped back a bottle of beer and leaned over a barn railing.

A light rain fell from a gray sky. The only sound that could be heard was a rake smoothing the dirt under Attfield`s shedrow.

``Lovely here, isn`t it?`` he said.

Attfield, who has trained Kinghaven Farms` With Approval and Izvestia to back-to-back Canadian Triple Crowns, has been coming here to the Payson Park training center since 1975.

``I like it for two reasons,`` Attfield said. ``The first is that you have all your horses under your sights every day and you see them train every day. Visiting them once-a-week is really not sufficient. The second reason is that I`ve done well running off this farm.``

Despite the fact that Payson is nearly a two-hour ride from South Florida`s tracks, Payson attracts a top clientele including LeRoy Jolley and his undefeated 2-year-old Meadow Star, horses from the stables of trainers Scotty Schulhofer and Tom Skiffington, and Canada`s Mike Doyle and Brian Cleary.

Payson, like several other well-know training centers in Florida, has waiting lists this season because of the closing of Hialeah Park. But even without Hialeah`s closing it`s doubtful that there would be any extra room at Payson. For the past several years Virginia Kraft Payson`s serene farm has attracted some of North America`s top horses and trainers. The farm features a mile training track that is 80 feet wide, a turf course and trails throughout the property.

The main track, Attfield said, ``can be a deep and tiring track.``. ``But if you learn to understand the track, and you train accordingly, you`ll do just fine.

``I see some people come up here and train by their watch. ``It concerns them if they look at their watch and don`t see fast works. But that isn`t what this track is all about.``

And it isn`t what Palm Beach Downs is all about.

Located in Delray Beach just south of 441, Palm Beach Downs opened in October 1985 with a grand design to build a community around a thoroughbred training center. The community, which was to feature its own runway for private jets and lots ranging from $95,400 to $197,000 has yet to materialize. Farm manager Ron Golbin has kept busy with the thoroughbred training center. This winter Golbin will have all six of his barns filled to capacity with approximately 192 horses. Golbin is also putting up a tent that will house another 40-50 thoroughbreds.

Palm Beach, which features a mile dirt track and a 7-furlong turf course, will house horses this winter for Joe Pierce Jr., Ben Perkins, John Ward, Bob Starnes, Gene Lotti, Mike Terry and Henry Collazo.

``We still have people waiting to get stalls,`` Golbin said. ``We`ve always had a lot of horses up here in the winter, but nothing like this.``

While Payson and Palm Beach turned away clients, Ken Jose is still looking for them.

Jose, a former jockey in California and New England, has taken the task of trying to rebuild Knightsbridge Farm.

Some five minutes north of Palm Beach, Knightsbridge is tucked away off Atlantic Boulevard, and from its traffic by the farms` Australian Pines. Jose is attempting to bring the farm back after poor management prior to his arrival. Knightsbridge is small, and its training track is only three-eighths of a mile, but the facility is being rebuilt by Jose.